Face Your Weaknesses to Pass the Bar Exam

Passing the 2024 February CA Bar Exam on her second try allowed Esme to put this nightmare behind her forever.

💬 “I passed the February 2024 CA bar exam on my second try! Can’t tell you how thrilled I am to never have to take that test again and finally get on with my life.”

How exciting. But there’s a price to pay for this ultimate reward.

First of all, there’s way too much to know.

You also go through a range of emotions.

You go from being anxious, overwhelmed, panicked, unmotivated, stressed, incompetent, ashamed, HAPPY YOU GOT SOMETHING RIGHT, depressed, embarrassed…

Not only is there a mental toll and an emotional toll, but there’s a financial toll as well. Each attempt involves exam fees, subscription fees for study supplements (which is why my study tools come with updates for life), and opportunity costs.

That adds even more stress!

Mental fortitude is key to bar prep. “The mind is 50% of this exam.”

Esme had to learn about these tolls the hard way on her first attempt. Then she conquered herself and the bar exam by facing inconvenient and uncomfortable emotions.

Resources Esme used to pass the CA Bar Exam on her second try

▶ Magicsheets

💬 “I was a little skeptical at first, since I didn’t think I needed more outlines, but something about condensing all the material to only a few pages per subject made it so much more digestible and easy to memorize.”

▶ AdaptiBar

💬 “I didn’t use any MBE supplements the first time…big mistake.”

• Use code here to get 10% off

▶ [CA only] BarEssays

💬 “For essays, I made sure that I read through as many essays and sample answers as possible (about 2 a day) using BarEssays.com.”

• Use code here to get $25 off

▶ A tutor

▶ MTYLT emails (get them here)

💬 “I got Magicsheets and read all of Brian’s emails: Saving the best for last! . . . emails were so motivating and reminded me that I wasn’t alone in this.”

What Esme did wrong on her devastating first attempt and got right on her second attempt at the bar exam

No one enjoys failing the bar exam.

I typed in my applicant ID two, three more times to make sure I was looking at the right results.

I could feel the heavy air of truth closing in on me. Crinkled foil pushed its way around the potato in my head, turning into TV static.

In some other universe, I passed. But in this one, I failed. I failed. I failed.

I was forced to accept the sinking feeling that I had to go through this process again and wait until May (at the earliest) for why I went to law school.

It was devastating for Esme too.

💬 “I was so devastated. My law school has a high bar passage rate, and everyone I knew had passed on their first try. I spent a few weeks crying every day and felt physically ill every time I thought about studying and taking the exam again. I also got broken up with a few days after finding out I didn’t pass, which was rough. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the next few months studying alone while working full time. And yet…”

But sometimes transformation requires pain. Pain benefits those who can learn.

Esme made it through with some key changes. How did she do it? Let’s do four before-and-after comparisons:

“I blindly followed Barbri’s schedule” vs. “I trusted myself more than ‘the process’”

On her first attempt, Esme was doing things for the sake of doing them.

💬 “I found myself becoming obsessed with staying on schedule rather than absorbing the material. I spent hours a day watching lectures, pausing them to take notes, only to come back the next day with no memory of the rules.”

You’re missing the point if you force yourself through the course for completion’s sake without learning.

This is tempting if you’re not aware of other paths or not sure what else to do in the face of overwhelm.

Now you know there are other options. What could you do instead?

Esme found ways that would cater to HER needs instead of catering to her course’s schedule. She focused on active learning on her own terms.

💬 “I knew Barbri wasn’t for me. Instead, I found a tutor (who I didn’t love, but he at least kept me on track with studying) and spent time building a study plan that worked with my work schedule, focusing on ACTIVE rather than PASSIVE studying.”

Of course, you might chalk this up to her having repeater experience.

💬 “I wasn’t starting from scratch. I just needed to tweak a few things and trust that I could do this.”

You might be right. Repeaters do start from experience.

But remember that you don’t need that first failure to succeed. You can reflect on your current experience so far.

I encourage you to trust yourself a little more.

You know when something isn’t working. If you can trust that feeling, then you can correct course accordingly.

Trust the process—the right process for you. That could be doing all the assignments. It could be modifying the course’s schedule. It could be making your own regimen of practice questions.

The right process is one that helps you understand and retain the material and answer questions correctly.

Oddly, the one thing most people don’t want to do is be intentional with the biggest exam of their lives.

“I was scared of my weaknesses” vs. “I attacked my weaknesses from the beginning”

Esme avoided her weaknesses like the plague. She was weak at the MBE, so she procrastinated on measuring her performance and facing the truth.

💬 “I started bar prep knowing that I’m a strong writer who has always struggled with multiple choice exams. I was so scared of Barbi’s mid-course MBE assessment that I kept putting it off, telling myself that I just needed to passively read more outlines.”

This can be comforting (maybe) but misleading in the short term. Esme ended up studying passively for months with nothing to show for it.

💬 “Unsurprisingly, I got something like a 40% on the timed MBE practice exam about 3 weeks before the test. This made me even more scared. I had spent almost two months studying every day with almost nothing to show for it.”

This cycle of avoiding failure and embarrassment now only to delay the failure is part of the emotional toll you may encounter.

You can avoid this by doing what Esme did the second time.

On her second attempt, she addressed the MBE from the start because it was her weakness. She realized it was something to lean into, not something to avoid. Embrace the suck.

💬 “I made sure to attack multiple choice from the very beginning, since that was my weakness the first time.”

The down days can give you valuable data points. As long as you use the down days as a learning moment, you’ll hopefully see those upticks. 

💬 “It wasn’t pretty at first, but I stuck with it. I became okay with doing poorly on practice sets because they were just that…practice. I used every wrong answer as a learning opportunity, and made sure I knew why I answered the other questions correctly.”

Once you know the truth, you can do something about it.

The point of preparation is to become prepared. Better to feel stupid now and get things wrong now than on the exam.

“I started memorizing too late” vs. “I started memorizing right away”

You don’t need to wait until you’re comfortable before you start doing something.

Bar takers seem to be split on when to memorize. Some say to save memorization for the last two weeks of bar prep.

💬 “It wasn’t until right after I took the simulated full day MBE (three weeks before the test) that I started making flashcards and really memorizing the black letter law. I don’t need to say much more about this…huge mistake.”

But why is it the default norm to not try to retain the material you’re supposed to know? Isn’t that what studying is about?

Memorization is about the frequency of attempts to recall.

There’s already a lot of rules to hold in your head. If you cram at the end, you leave less room to grind and practice right before the exam when what you learn from practice will be freshest.

💬 “The only way my brain was able to keep all this information was through several months of repetition.”

In my view, it’s better to try to memorize sooner than later, like Esme did her second time around.

💬 “Instead of waiting until I felt ‘comfortable’ with certain subjects, I started making flashcards almost immediately.”

💬 “I ended up using Magicsheets to help create my flashcards.”

Again, this could be made easier by the privilege of a repeater who’s already had time to get familiar with the material. This doesn’t mean you can’t do the same thing even if you’re a first timer.

“I refused to spend another dollar preparing” vs. “I got AdaptiBar early and used it every day”

Esme (understandably) tried to minimize expenses during this process. Bar prep can get expensive! (Though it doesn’t have to be.)

But this is a delicate balance. It can backfire on you. If you end up retaking the bar exam, that adds even more to your financial toll.

💬 “I refused to spend another dollar preparing for this test, so I didn’t even consider getting Adaptibar or UWorld. Joke’s on me, because my refusal may have been the difference between passing and failing…and me spending another thousand or so bucks on registering for the February exam.”

Using too few resources is one of the ways that hold you back from effective studying. But something that gives you even a 1% higher chance of passing the bar can be worth the investment in the long run.

On her second try, Esme used AdaptiBar every day to attack her weakness (which of course paid off).

💬 “The MBE was my weakness, so I made sure not to shy away from it. I did as many practice questions as I could while still having time to review all of them.”

💬 “RESULT: I passed! This test is beastly.”

If things don’t go your way

There’s no guarantee that even perfect preparation will translate to performance on test day. Proper preparation only increases your chances of passing.

“Whoa, where’s the encouragement?! Me want encouragement!”

Wait, am I supposed to be nice in these articles? Lol

Imagining worst-case scenarios helps you prepare for them. My fingers are crossed that things go your way when you take the bar exam.

But Esme offers a perspective about not getting it right the first time.

💬 “While I still wish I had passed the first time (and so does my bank account), I realized at some point during my second round of bar prep that there is something valuable about focusing all of your time, money, and energy on accomplishing something…and coming up short.”

Not everything will always go your way. When things (even beyond the bar exam) don’t turn out as you want, it’s how you respond that determines your success.

💬 “There’s a good chance that at some point during our career as lawyers, we’ll have a case where the law and facts are on our side, yet the judge or jury will decide otherwise. It’s okay to be frustrated when that happens. But you pick yourself up and move forward, using that frustration as a tailwind rather than a headwind.”

So if you ever have to take the bar exam more than once, so be it! Tolls be damned.

I don’t want that to happen to you, but it also wouldn’t be the end of the world. You might even get that repeater advantage of starting from experience.

It’s how you play the hand given and move forward that determines whether you win in the end.

Right now, you still have the power to bet on yourself and play your cards right.

—

Great work, Esme!

Are you more willing to face your weaknesses now?

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